his domain to the title. During eight hundred years, through conquest,
craft, inheritance, the work of acquisition goes on; even under Louis
XV France is augmented by the acquisition of Lorraine and Corsica.
Starting from nothing, the King is the maker of a compact State,
containing the population of twenty-six millions, and then the most
powerful in -Europe. - Throughout this interval he is at the head of
the national defense. He is the liberator of the country against
foreigners, against the Pope in the fourteenth century, against the
English in the fifteenth, against the Spaniards in the sixteenth. In
the interior, from the twelfth century onward, with the helmet on his
brow, and always on the road, he is the great justiciary, demolishing
the towers of the feudal brigands, repressing the excesses of the
powerful, and protecting the oppressed.[14] He puts an end to
private warfare; he establishes order and tranquility. This was an
immense accomplishment, which, from Louis le Gros to St. Louis, from
Philippe le Bel to Charles VII, continues uninterruptedly up to the
middle of the eighteenth century in the edict against duels and in the
"Grand Jours."[15] Meanwhile all useful projects carried out under
his orders, or developed under his patronage, roads, harbors, canals,
asylums, universities, academies, institutions of piety, of refuge, of
education, of science, of industry, and of commerce, bears his imprint
and proclaim the public benefactor.-Services of this character
challenge a proportionate recompense; it is allowed that from father
to son he is wedded to France; that she acts only through him; that he
acts only for her; while every souvenir of the past and every present
interest combine to sanction this union. The Church consecrates it at
Rheims by a sort of eighth sacrament, accompanied with legends and
miracles; he is the anointed of God.[16] The nobles, through an old
instinct of military fealty, consider themselves his bodyguard, and
down to August 10, 1789, rush forward to die for him on his staircase;